This disclosure relates generally to the field of wireless communication, and in particular to discovering services provided by associated service providers using Layer 2 Service Discovery protocols.
A variety of devices are capable of providing services, for example, printing service, via wireless communication networks operating in compliance with standardized technologies such as IEEE 802.11. Conventionally, those devices and/or services are discovered using Layer 3 Service Discovery (L3SD) protocols, such as Simple Service Discovery Protocol (SSDP), wherein service consumers are required to establish a layer-3 end-to-end connection with service providers in order to obtain multicast messages describing services provided by those service providers. These L3SD protocols can result in a lengthy connection process to discover services.
Layer 2 Service Discovery (L2SD) enables devices to discover desired services without having to establish layer-3 connection. Efforts have been made to implement L2SD operable in some wireless communication standards, such as Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS), Peer 2 Peer Special Interest Group (P2P SIG) and Wireless Gigabit Alliance (WGA).